<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>the eternal state of post-mourning by elijah_was_a_prophet</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352202">the eternal state of post-mourning</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/pseuds/elijah_was_a_prophet'>elijah_was_a_prophet</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Neon Genesis Evangelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:55:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,144</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352202</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/pseuds/elijah_was_a_prophet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>2003. Somehow they limp onward.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fuyutsuki Kouzou &amp; Ikari Yui</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>We die afen and afen</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the eternal state of post-mourning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamebucket/gifts">shamebucket</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fuyutsuki began to feel a lingering guilt about his role in the apocalypse around the time of the 2003 Silver Springs Massacre, which happened not 50 kilometers from the North American Metabiology Lab. The week before they’d been running experiments on how to create toxic AT fields- entities whose very presence caused a dissolution of opposing AT fields- and he couldn’t help but worry if there had been some kind of environmental effect that caused an entire compound to suddenly rise up and bludgeon one another to death. Official reports called it a kind of collective traumatic break, brought on by grief, but everyone grieved post-Second Impact. </p><p>“Interesting thing about grief,” Yui said lightly while perched on her stool in their lab looking at nervous system structures. “It’s one of the only bodily phenomena which effects both biological and metaphysical change. Not only on the dying, either- if you’ll observe these Walsh electroosteoneurographs, you’ll see when the Chrysostom spires break the ion pumps of the heart begin to flow backwards. The heart is literally breaking on two dimensions.” </p><p>“And the people you collected these electroosteoneurographs from?” </p><p>“The gravediggers at the Memorial Yard. We gave them free juice and an air-conditioned waiting room.” </p><p>“I don’t think that’s covered under the ethics guide.” </p><p>“Oh, you know. Some things can’t be helped. If you’re looking for AT toxicity then you’re better off looking in the basement.” </p><p>“That’s the computer department.” </p><p>“So you’ve met the head of the MAGI project.” </p><p>“Dr. Akagi, yes.” </p><p>“You like her?” </p><p>“I haven’t shared more than three words with her.” </p><p>“Possibly for the better. She’s not a very happy person.” </p><p> </p><p>Being happy was hard to define in this new era, Fuyutsuki thought while he waited in the cafeteria line. Recently on one of his walks he’d ended up in a tent camp where someone had hung a sign saying ‘DAYS SINCE OUR LAST SUICIDE: 6’ next to the community announcement board. The remaining psychologists were calling it post-apocalyptic syndrome, the result of PTSD becoming endemic among the sixth of the world which remained. Their attempts to treat it led to many bizarre policies on base. For example, during lunch that day they played classical music with added underlying tones that the third-floor psychobiologists thought might reduce the rates of depression and anxiety. </p><p>“I hate what they’ve done to Beethoven,” Yui said over the canteen soup. It was flat reconstructed flavors with minimal salt, as to not spike anyone’s blood pressure. </p><p>“You’re not supposed to be able to hear the tones.” </p><p>“They mess up the resonance of the actual instruments. Even if you can’t hear them their effects ripple outwards.” </p><p>Like a suicide itself. There’d been a major panic in the engineering department after three interns had died in one week; they’d lived in the same quad and after the first one died the empty space had been unbearable. The last girl left had been kept on the psych ward for a week before they let her leave. She’d been held up as a model of resilience to the staff. </p><p>“I didn’t like them very much,” she said when they asked how she kept going. “And now I have the room all to myself.” </p><p>That bit didn’t make it into the Friday morning announcements.  </p><p> </p><p>They didn’t discuss suicide much in the metabiology rooms. There was the death of the body, which biology explained well enough, but metathantology was a line that no researcher had pressed at yet aside from some early 90’s papers on the similarities in inherent wave pattern depressions between terminally ill cancer patients and research subjects on entactogens. Despite how it hung over everyone’s heads and in their bodies they shoved it aside, placed it in a corner with all their other memories of the Year Long Summer. Fuyutsuki turned the issue over in his head as he walked up the stairs into the fourth floor labs.</p><p>“They got snow in Finland today,” one of the research assistants greeted him with.  </p><p>“Snow?” </p><p>“For a few minutes. Maybe the axis is wobbling back to normal. I tried to make my friend explain it, because she works over in climatology, but it went over my head.” </p><p>His presence caused a stir as all the research students flocked to him with their requests.</p><p>“There’s a new box of samples, Professor.” </p><p>“Professor, can you look at my research data?” </p><p>“I have to leave early for a funeral, Professor.” </p><p>“What should I do if the LCL in my interface headset culture gets cloudy?” </p><p>“Orderly line, please, and I’ll address it one by one.” </p><p>Yui, stripping the myelin from cauda equina to use in interface systems, gave him a bag of candies when he sat down an hour later. </p><p>“New idea from the higher ups. Food based positive reinforcement. Every time I see an intern doing something kind they want me to give them a lemon drop.” </p><p>“Like treating a dog.” </p><p>“Thats what I said! Then they mumbled something at me about limbic systems and left. I don’t think they were very happy about it.” </p><p>They sat in silent dissection for a while, Fuyutsuki placing the stripped nerves into a solution of sorbic acid and glucose. When working in metabiology strange solutions tended to appear, the tenuous connection between what could be felt and what was theoretically lying under the surface contrary to purely physical relationships. Even the simplest concept, string neurotransmitters, had taken eight years to be described. </p><p>He told his first-year students that it was like if music was chemistry, and the only way to get exact results was to replicate conditions down to the emotions of the researcher at the time of the experiment and the personal will of the test subjects. There had been a lot of drop-outs in the first week after he explained how dual fruit theory created what was called reflection consciousness using twelve-bar blues as a metaphor. </p><p>Yui had asked him if the presence of the Chamber of Guf as a purposeful structure proved intelligent design, or if it was evidence that the universe was one massive Boltzmann brain. He’d taken to her immediately. And here, ten plus years later, he was still more than a little enamored. There’d been a theory back in those days that some people’s souls naturally repelled, while others attracted, and that was an accurate evaluation of how Yui’s soul must have been. </p><p>That, then was what kept the metabiology department alive. No magic ritual or psychological resilience or even exceptional abilities to rationalize and deal with trauma- no, they all rested at Yui Ikari’s feet. Like the hypothetical Benedictine Throne, a being capable of holding multiple souls, Yui anchored them all down so that they would continue to live. </p><p>“What do you think of these numbers?” she asked, sliding over a seraphicus pressed slide. The silver charm on her bracelet jingled. </p><p>“Absolutely beautiful.” </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>